Watercolor question

[talmir]

I've seen many tutorials here and there on this page but does anyone have any tips and/or methods on how to use watercolors?

[mtw]

Try this site. I haven't read through that stuff, but it seems like you could find something useful there.

[danteort]

Well that's quite a vague question you have there.

I'm going to assume you don't have much experience with them, if you don't mind, and give you a basic rundown of my beginning watercolor class.

Here's how my teacher broke down the basics:

First, you need the right tools. Watercolor brushes, preferably with natural hairs, we started with two flat brushes (1 inch and 1/2 inch) and three rounds (number 4, 8, and 12)decent paint (Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton make 'student quality' paints that are very good); a decent watercolor palette; and, most importantly, you need good quality watercolor paper. Don't just buy a pad of "watercolor paper." My teacher required we buy Arches 140 lb cold-pressed paper. It's quite versatile and she wanted us all on the same playing field. You'll want two containers for water: one for clean water and the other for washing your brushes.

The colors we started with were Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange, Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Cobolt Violet, Manganese Blue, Cerulean Blue, Cobolt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Prussian Blue, Hooker's Green, Winsor Violet (or any standard purple; I use Dioxazine Violet), Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber.

So, that said, you need to familiarize yourself with your paints. Get all your paints squeezed into your palette (the pigment STAYS in the wells; you don't need to wash it out at the end of your session; just let it dry). Now, the first thing you'll need to do is get used to finding the ratio between pigment and water to achieve maximum intensity of each color. So, pick a color, get some pigment onto the 'mixing area' of your palette, and with another (clean) brush, drop some water into it. Mix it around, and put it on the paper. You'll want to make a color chart with each color you have, and you want the chart to show each color at FULL INTENSITY. This will take some trial and error, but you want to find the exact ratio of pigment to water that will allow your colors to be their fullest intensity while staying transparent.

So, once you've gotten the hang of that, your next step is to get used to mixing colors. Paint a color wheel. Start with the primary colors, then mix your secondaries, then your tertiary colors. Then practice mixing comlimentary colors to achieve different "grays" (though some of them will be brown). For example, mix red and green but favor the red a little bit, then do it again and favor the green a little bit. Do it for each of the complimentary colors. Now try to mix a neutral gray. This is very tough at first, but trial and error is what's needed. Once you have your neutral gray, mix a bit of that with each of your primary and secondary colors to make a shade of each one (for example, a darker version of red, a darker orange, etc.) Then make a tint of each color (a lighter version) by adding water.

Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Color_Wheel.jpg) is the finished color wheel I did.

Our next step was to make complex colors, to become even more familiar with what happens when you mix the paint. So, we made 15 versions of red, blue, and yellow. You can use two, three, four, or even more colors to make these, but the end color needs to 'read' as red, blue, or yellow.

Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Complex_Colors.jpg) is my version of that.

Up next was learning to control values. So, we started with a simple value scale. The thing to shoot for is hitting the correct value the FIRST TIME; no going back into it once it's down. Practice this until it's mastered.

Look here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Value_Scale.jpg) for mine.

After getting the hang of this, we took a black and white photo and reproduced it using one dark color (such as prussian blue). The goal here is to hit the value you want exactly when you want it, and only build up the paint layer by layer when it's necessary. Remember to start with the light areas and then move in with the darks. Watercolor is, for the most part, done light to dark.

Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Value_Study_-_Candy.jpg) is mine.

Next up was the wash. There are basically three types of washes: the flat wash, the gradated wash, and the inverted gradated wash. The flat wash is pretty simple, though it takes some trial and error. Make a 4x4 inch square and paint a flat wash at full intensity. Make sure you work real wet, since if you don't use enough paint at a time it'll start drying too quickly and you'll have streaks. Once you've gotten the hang of that, go for the gradated wash, which will definitely take some serious trial and error. The number one rule with washes is do NOT go back into the paint once it's down! You'll just mess things up. You either hit it or you don't. Once you've gotten that, move on to the inverted gradated wash. This is awesome, since all you do is paint a gradated wash, let it dry completely, turn the paper upside down, and paint another one on top with a different color.

Flat wash (http://danteort.tripod.com/Wash_-_Flat.jpg)
Gradated wash (http://danteort.tripod.com/Wash_-_Gradated.jpg)
Inverted Gradated wash (http://danteort.tripod.com/Wash_-_Inverted_Gradated.jpg)

Up next was learning how to "shade" or model with the paint. To do this, we simply painted lots and lots of spheres to practice. So, draw a whole bunch of circles and start practicing making them look like spheres. There are basically four ways of doing this: let your strokes show with hard edges, let your strokes show with soft edges, wet into wet, or a combination of any of the three. Letting your strokes show with hard edges is pretty self explanatory. Just put down a whole bunch of strokes, sort of like hatching, let them dry, then build on top of those until it looks like a sphere. Having soft edges, however, requires that you take some clean water and put it right next to the eges to 'soften' them. Let each layer dry and build on top of the next. Wet into wet is just as it sounds: don't let the paint dry and hit what you want the first try.

I don't have my examples of these, but I think it's pretty self explanatory. If they don't look like spheres, then something's wrong.

Next up was wet into wet. There are three ways of doing this: put down a color and while it's wet, drop clean water into it; put down clean water and drop color into it; or, put down a color and while it's wet drop another color into it. This is always fun, since it looks beautiful and requires little effort. The worst think you can do is overwork the paint. Basically, let the paint just flow and see what happens.

Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Tree_Branch.jpg) is a painting done with various wet into wet techniques.

Up next is a great technique known as glazing. This is how you can really build up some interesting stuff. Basically, you build up very transparent layers of color, one on top of the other, in order to either change the color of the object or to model it. Say you're painting a mug, and you put in all the shadows so it looks like a mug, but you want it to be pink; so then you just take a very transparent pink and put it on top. Glazing is very time intensive, and you can put upwards of 10, 20, 30 layers of paint on top of each other, depending on what you want to do. I don't have an example of this, but I hope you see what I mean.

Dry brushing is a great technique as well. This is exactly as it sounds: get some paint on the brush, wipe off all the 'wet' paint until it just barely grips the surface of the paper, and apply it where needed. This is useful for adding texture such as grass, hair, concrete, anything rough.

Those are basically the techniques of watercolor. Using all these, you can paint pretty much anything. Just remember that you work light to dark in watercolor. You can always darken something by painting over it, but you can't paint over a dark part hoping to get lighter. (You can scrub out some of the paint using clean water and a brush, but that's not always something you want to do).

Remember that your pencil drawing is VERY important in order to have a good painting. Even if you want to paint really loose and expressively, you need a good foundation underneath everything.

Once you've gotten the hang of the basic techniques, try copying a painting. Aim for as close a reproduction as possible. This will help you deconstruct how the artist painted, and really helps you organize yourself.

Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Copy_Painting_-_Snow_Bell.jpg) was my copy painting last semester, and I learned a ton doing it.

After that, we were totally ready to do our own painting. Here (http://danteort.tripod.com/Cello_Bow.jpg) was my final painting for the class.

Hope this was somewhat informative. Good luck!

[talmir]

DANTEORT: You're really good with the watercolors.. I must admit you have even interested me more in watercolors with this explenation than I was before.. Thank you very very much.. :) I'll be starting with these various excercises as soon as I can

[CoolkatCasey]

dante ort, where do you go to school?

those are the exact excercises i did two years ago in my watercolor class at meremac community college in st louis.

whats ur teachers name?

[danteort]

I'm taking watercolor at Meramec, with Margaret Keller. Small world I guess. :chug: